Sailor Moon was created by Naoko Takeuchi, and the DARK.MATTER
setting was written by Wolfgang Baur and Monte Cook. I own neither of
these things, and expect that if either of those last two people
Google their own names they are going to be incredibly confused.



* * * * *



   For being an ancient, alien demon who has been on Earth longer than
mankind has, simmering for millennia in his own toxic hatred,
eternally trapped a handsbreadth away from reality, seeing everything
but only able to affect it in the most transient of ways, ever longing
to be free and to annihilate the world that has imprisoned him, for
all this the creature most recently known as the Pharaoh 90 is a very
patient, very accommodating sort.


   He said his true name was "death" and that's closest to what he
thinks of himself as, but it's not the truth. He doesn't really have a
name and he doesn't much care about when people assign him the wrong
one (unless, of course, he's using the truth about his name to
intimidate a foolish mortal who he will in thirty seconds shred the
mind from the body of and leave her locked into that moment of fear
and despair and anguish forever, but we've already seen this). He's
collected so many names over the years not because he feels compelled
to wear a different mask to each culture he approaches, but because he
just never bothers to correct them. Call him The Silent One, or Isci
ba Fan, because the minds of those he occupies are utterly silent?
Sure, that seems accurate enough, knock yourselves out. Want to name
him Lucifer because he represents everything you're afraid of? Seems
like as good a name as any for someone who wants all of you to die
screaming. The Wolf of Ragnarok who will cleanse the Earth of the
impure enemies of the Aryan race? Sure will, and he'll kill everyone
else as part of the deal but we don't need to tell the Thule Society
that. You just got done reading a book about the Pharaoh Akenaten who
was so evil the Egyptians tried to scourge his name from history and
you think the end of the world comes in '99? How about we have the
Pharaoh of Ninety and oh just for you let's make a servitor psyche and
call it the Mistress of Nine and now no surprises when we come
together and end the world, okay?


   Pharaoh 90 is used to working slow and subtle and not sweating the
small stuff. He needs the help of human beings to arrive fully in our
world and escape his personal limbo, but he doesn't need or care for
them to know what it is they are doing. Sacrifice a man on a basalt
altar and pass around a chalice filled with his blood? The only part
of the ritual that mattered was gathering the psionic energy the man
was spewing out as he was in terror for his life, but if you want to
do something after that you go right on ahead. Lucifer isn't gonna
stop you, because Lucifer doesn't want to take the effort to go find
another demoniac cabal that might do things a bit more efficiently.
Are you so deranged with guilt that you've got to rationalize that
psionic energy harvest as plucking out the very essence of a pure
soul? Then Pharaoh 90 says pluck, pluck away at those "pure heart
crystals" because only four or five people on the planet Earth
understand the physics of what you're doing and the rest of them are
happy and well-adjusted and DON'T live on top on one of the biggest
dark matter gateways in the Eastern Hemisphere.


   Pharaoh 90 can afford to operate like this because he is immortal
and has time to wait, even after countless summoners screw up and get
something wrong or get caught by the authorities or break apart due to
interpersonal differences. Getting impatient, moving too quickly,
coming on too strong could just drive people away. He had time to get
it right.


   Pharaoh 90 chose to operate like this because, and deep down he
realizes this, he is squeamish. He is capable of directly controlling
a human mind but almost never does so, and even then only for
incredibly short periods, because it is gross. To him it is like
wearing someone else's dirty underwear, only instead of putting it on
his groin he is putting it on the immaterial essence of his mind which
is arguably more valuable. Even when he put into motion a plan that
required close contact with his summoners, he psionically crafted a
separate intelligence and used it to possess the human he was using as
a focal point, one that was far less intelligent and skilled than he
was, just so he wouldn't have to get his soul dirty by touching icky
human brains with it.


   And how did that plan turn out? Oh, everything got cocked up
fourteen seconds before completion. Fourteen seconds and the aperture
would have been wide enough to allow in not just a portion of the
Silent One's mind, but his physical form in all of its destructive
glory. Maybe two or three more seconds for him to kill everyone on the
island of Japan. Looking back he saw at least a hundred places where
Dr. Tomoe or the Mistress Nine or those intolerable Witches had
screwed around for way more than fourteen seconds where he should have
just taken direct control and moved things forward efficiently and
quickly.


   And instead, he was trapped again, worse, locked in a space that
was no space, expansive and claustrophobic, a dull gray he could sense
even without eyes, for the past 58 hours and 45 minutes. Unable to see
or effect the hated human world at all, he's had a lot of time to
reflect on his past mistakes, on how they led to this current failure,
and Pharaoh 90 has made a decision.


   He is absolutely done fucking around.


* * * SAILOR.MOON: DOUBLE EXPOSURE


CHAPTER 3: DOUBLE DUTY * * *


JUUBAN GENERAL HOSPITAL ROOM 409 TOKYO, JAPAN
SUNDAY FEBRUARY 20, 1995, 3:03 PM


   Bill Wheeler stared at the young Hotaru Tomoe across the back of a
hospital chair. She stared right back at him, her indigo eyes patient
and sad, like she was waiting for him to finish so she could go back
to doing something she dreaded. She was in a hospital gown, an IV drip
was in her arm and EKG electrodes were stuck to her chest and the
weight of the world was on her shoulders.


   "Your English is really good," Bill said more to fill up the awful
Silence than to actually communicate an idea, "I bet that took a lot
of practice."


   "No, it didn't," she sighed, and almost let the sentence end there.
Then added, "My father spoke English for his work, I've been speaking
it as long as I have Japanese."


   "Oh." Bill shifted his weight around on his chair. "It took me
forever to learn Russian and now I barely get a chance to use it."


   "That must have made you unhappy." She looked away from him, toward
a wall with nothing interesting on it. "Having all that effort turn
out to be for nothing."


   He shrugged. "Well, I thought I was going to need it for when the
Soviets invaded the US for the New World Order, so I'm glad I wasted
my time if that was the alternative." He turned around and grabbed a
couple cans that he'd laid on the ground behind him. "You want
something to drink? You must be pretty thirsty after being out for two
days. I got a blue can of stuff, and a purple can of stuff, neither of
which I have any idea what's inside."


   "I'm not thirsty, thank you." A lie, of course, but fulfilling
needs like her thirst didn't seem like something anyone should waste
their time on. "The blue can is fruit punch and the purple can is
grape soda, if you want them."


   He looked at the purple can and arched an eyebrow like he was
examining some pre-Sumerian artifact. "Grape soda? That all? You're
sure it isn't anything crazy like eggplant?"


   She didn't stare at him, she didn't stare through him, she just
pointed her eyes at him and then abandoned the controls. "No. It's not
eggplant."


   He shook his head and put both cans back down where he got them.
More silence, clearly less comfortable to him than to her. Finally,
"You know, they sent me in here to talk to you because they think I
have some kind of rapport with kids."


   "But you don't." Not an insult, a statement of fact, and one he
could not dispute.


   "I don't. They just think I do because I got this autistic kid to
open up and tell us where his dad -- who was some kind of crazy wizard
guy -- where he ran off to so we could stop him from blowing up
Spokane. And the only reason I could do that was my cable had been on
the fritz and one of the only shows I could get was the one he was
obsessed with."


   "And now they're forcing you do do things you don't know how
because they don't know how either."


   Bill snorted, in a half-laugh. "No, I volunteered. I didn't want
any of them to come in here and lay a line of bullshit on you about
how you won some kind of contest and you get to go on a fun trip or
something stupid like that."


   She looked down at her feet. "As if that ever happens."


   "Exactly," he said, not fully aware of the sentiment he was
agreeing with, "Those yoinks want to talk down to you like you're a
little kid who can't put two and two together, and I know differently.
They think you're pulling things from some TV show--" The lights
suddenly went out and he stopped, though he could still see everything
clearly by the sunlight coming in through the window. After a couple
seconds there was a revving sound that he could only attribute to 'the
backup generators kicking in' and power came back to the hallway one
light at a time with a rhythmic 'thuk-thuk-thuk'. He stared up at the
ceiling a few more seconds and blinked. "...Huh. I wonder what that
was?"


   Then a voice came on over the PA system, saying something in
Japanese. Hotaru said "They just said my name and what room we're in",
as if that information made her sad, but no more or less sad than
anything else in the world made her.


* * *


   The five Senshi met at the hospital now that Usagi was awake,
hopefully to shed some light on what had happened. Ami and Minako, who
had gone home that fateful night, had a lot of creative explaining to
do as to where they were and what they were doing but for the most
part found family members who were happy they were safe and,
relatively speaking, healthy. Makoto had just spent a night at the
hospital, having no pressing reason to go home, and the doctors wanted
to keep Rei overnight for observation even after she regained
consciousness. Usagi had come to last night and looked to be getting
the same treatment. Her parents were here, relieved beyond words that
their daughter was alive. It had taken a couple of hours, but Usagi
had finally convinced them to leave and let her discuss "girl things"
with her friends; even then the five of them whispered as Usagi's
parents were right outside the door.


   "So they say they found you at Toudai?" Minako asked in a tone of
voice that didn't know if it wanted to be inquisitive or gossipy. "How
did you get to Toudai?"


   "I don't know!" shouted Usagi as if she was denying a murder
allegation, then remembering she was supposed to be whispering, "I
don't know. The last thing I remember was... Sailor Saturn told me
'goodbye', and then I tried to save her, but I couldn't..."


   "We don't think this was Sailor Saturn's plan," interrupted Rei,
and quickly so Usagi wouldn't start crying. "She hadn't even turned to
face the Pharaoh yet when it happened, and she looked like she was
preparing to do something but she wasn't ready yet. When the portal
exploded I think she was as surprised as anyone."


   Usagi blinked. "So... what did happen?"


   Makoto sighed. "We aren't sure. We think the Pharaoh 90 is dead, or
back on his home planet, nobody's seen a sign of him or any daimons
since the incident. We think that maybe a piece of equipment must have
overloaded, or malfunctioned, or something. Nobody's been able to find
Neptune, Uranus or Saturn either -- and there was no school on Friday
and it's the weekend now so we've had time to look."


   Ami piped up. "The explosion apparently took you to Toudai, and it
took us about twenty meters closer to Toudai, and you were standing
closer to it than us. If it was based on distance, Saturn may have
been thrown past Toudai and Neptune and Uranus would have wound up
somewhere between us." She paused and looked a bit disappointed. "That
doesn't help us find out where they are now, though."


   Usagi furrowed her brow. "Well, couldn't you use the Mercury
Computer to track them, or plot a trajectory or scan for life signs or
whatever it does?"


   Makoto sighed again and uncrossed her arms. "The Mercury Computer
can't do that any more, Usagi. None of our powers have worked since
the incident. They're gone."


   Usagi tilted her head and cocked an eyebrow. "No... they aren't..."
she said while looking at Makoto like she'd grown a second head.


   Makoto got ready to admonish Usagi about how this was serious and
pretending there wasn't a problem wouldn't solve it... and then she
realized son of a bitch, Usagi's right. That inner spark, that point
of light, was there and simmering with the same intensity it ever had.
It must have faded back in instead of appearing as abruptly as it
left, and like the fabled frog in the pot of boiling water the changes
had been too gradual for any of them to notice. It hadn't come back as
of 8 AM this morning, which was the last time any of them checked, but
that left seven hours afterward for it to gradually seep back. Minako,
Ami, and Rei, all coming to the same realization, blushed and turned
away in unison and felt like colossal jackasses.


   "Wait," said Rei, "If we didn't lose our powers, something had to
be keeping us from using them. And if that wore off eventually, what
if the--"


   She cut herself off abruptly when the lights went out; not that she
required the lights to speak, and she could see just fine with the
daylight from the window, but the lights going out just seemed like
the kind of event that you stop talking for. There was a revving noise
that sounded exactly like backup generators do when they kick in, and
the lights in the hallway came back on one at time with a 'thuk-thuk-
thuk'. A couple seconds later a young man came on the public address
system and announced, matter-of-factly, "Tomoe Hotaru is in room 409."


   "Well..." said Minako, "I guess that's one question answered?"


* * *


   A young man in a patient's gown threw open the door to room 409.
Behind him was a woman in a similar gown with burn scars on her face
and a man wearing what looked like a uniform of some kind, what Hotaru
recognized as the uniform worn by students of the Mugen academy. All
three of them had the same look of empty malice in their eyes.


   Bill Wheeler shouted "Hey, es ocupado!" at the intrusion but the
man didn't seem to hear him or care what he had to say. He walked to
the side of the bed and reached for Hotaru and that was when Bill
punched him in the face. The man recoiled but was not felled, and he
glared at Bill as his two backups entered the room. He said something,
something that was probably very intimidating, but as it was in
Japanese and did not contain the words "konnichiwa", "sayonara", or
"kamikaze", Bill did not understand a word of it.


   Bill threw another punch that was slapped away by Gown-Man and
retorted to with a fist to his throat. Bill gasped but was able to
block the followup shot to his chest with a well-placed forearm. He
threw a wild elbow to his right in case Gown-Girl was circling off to
his side but he connected with nothing but air.


   "There's no point to it," Hotaru said as if there weren't three
people there to violently abduct her, "I can't do what they need me
for anyway." She did not elect to repeat that in Japanese and if any
of the three spoke English -- which they probably did -- they showed
no reaction to it.


   Gown-Girl wrapped her arms around Bill's neck from behind,
prompting him to rush backwards and smash her against the wall,
toppling an uneaten lunch tray off the counter and leaving clumps of
rice sticking to her back. Bill tried to kick Gown-Man in the chest to
keep him from closing in, but didn't have the room to extend his leg
and ended up weakly tapping his thigh. Gown-Man grabbed his foot and
started to lift it to throw Bill off-balance; Bill grabbed a hold of
the IV stand next to the bed and smashed Gown-Man over the head with
it and sent him to the floor like a sack of wet sand.


   Meanwhile, Uniform-Man had calmly walked to the other side of
Hotaru's bed and started to make off with her. He'd reached for her as
if to grab her and throw her over his shoulder, but she raised a hand
and indicated she'd go with him on her own. She disconnected the
electrodes on her chest, leaving the white circles of gauze, and
calmly removed the IV from her arm. She sat up and tentatively put a
foot onto the floor; confirming she could walk, she stood up and began
to follow Uniform-Man out of the room. She turned back and looked at
Bill with an expression that said 'I could be resisting but what would
be the point?'


   Gown-Girl kicked Bill in the back of the knee before he could bring
his other foot back into position and then both of them hit the floor
. Bill was throwing elbows behind him to try and dislodge the girl but
he couldn't get them far enough behind him with any force. She re-
positioned herself to sit above him, one arm still around his throat,
and she grabbed the clear plastic tube that had just been in Hotaru's
arm and started wrapping it around Bill's neck. Bill tried to get his
thumbs underneath the girl's improvised garrote to give himself enough
room to breathe but he wasn't quite fast enough.


   Uniform-Man was walking ahead of Hotaru and so he reached the door
first and bumped into Donna Truitt, spilling some hot chocolate out of
the mug she was holding. Both of them looked confused for a split-
second, and then Donna shattered the ceramic mug across the man's
face, dousing him with hot liquid as well. He winced and covered his
eyes and left himself open for Donna to punch him in the solar plexus,
take a half-step backwards, and then kick him in the stomach and send
him rolling over the foot and into the bed Hotaru had just been laying
in.


   "Gack", called Bill from the floor, which combined with the
panicked kicking of his legs was the Universal Language of Being
Strangled for 'Help me, I am being strangled!' Donna quickly stepped
over Gown-Man's fallen body and grabbed Gown-Girl's arms, both now
pulling on the tube wrapped around Bill's neck. She grabbed the girl's
thumb and yanked it back until she screamed and let go; Bill
immediately leaned forward and gave Donna room to knee the girl in the
face and send her, hard, into the wall behind her.


   Hotaru looked at Uniform-Man's unconscious body dejectedly. Bill
grabbed at his throat and gasped for air. Gown-Man started to get back
up, and Donna stomped on his stomach. Bill looked up at her and tried
to gasp a question but he didn't have the breath to make it out.


   "I went over to the nurse's station to get Miss Tomoe some hot
chocolate," she said to answer what she knew Bill was asking. A pause.
"I can't leave you alone for a second."


   "Those were Mugen Academy students," Hotaru said without looking at
either one of them. "They're still under the Pharaoh 90's control and
they want to bring me back to summon him. If they took me, I would
have had another chance to kill him."


   Donna thought about that for a second. "Yeah, Bill, what did you go
and do that for?"


   "Not..." gasped Bill, waving his arms in front of him for no
apparent reason. "Gonna let you... Because you said... Had to die
to... to do it."


   Donna scoffed. "Okay, you were so not thinking about that until
just now."


   "It's the only way to stop him," said Hotaru. She paused a couple
seconds, then, "I'm sorry they hurt you."


   "It's okay," he gasped, "It's okay. Not your fault."


   There was the sound of a huge crash from downstairs and faint
shouting. "Oh, that can't be good," said Donna, "I think it's time we
got the Hell out of here."


* * *


   "Why would they just announce where Hotaru was staying? They didn't
even, like, page a doctor there or anything," asked Usagi.


   Ami thought about it for a second. "You know, most of the people
affected by the accident were students at the Mugen Academy, and a lot
of them are still patients here or are visiting their classmates who
are..."


   They all looked at each other and shared the same realization --
which was, roughly 'oh, shit'.


   "One of them must have found out where she was and then called them
all up there!" said Minako, "We've got to get up there before they
take off with her!"


   Ami, Minako, and Rei got to their feet -- Makoto got to her one
foot and one crutch -- and Usagi threw the hospital blanket off her
body in one fluid motion. Rei held out a hand and stopped her. "Usa-
chan, what are you doing?"


   "What do you mean what am I doing, I'm coming with you to save
Hotaru-chan!" said Usagi at a normal conversational level.


   Rei winced. "No, you can't get up and start doing Sailor Senshi
business!" she whispered as loudly as she could make a whisper go.
"Your parents are right outside the door and you're not even supposed
to be walking around yet! They'll stop you and they'll blow your
cover!"


   Usagi started to say something but Rei figured they were operating
under a bit of a time limit, so she threw the door open and backed out
of the room without hearing what she had to say.


   "So, you girls sort out everything you needed to?" asked Usagi's
father from a bench on the other side of the hallway. That was good,
that meant he probably wasn't close enough to hear them.


   "Oh, everything we could," chimed Minako sweetly. "But you know how
us girls are, once we get to chatting we can go at it for hours!"


   "Well, why the rush to leave? We were going to go get some lunch
and bring some back for Usagi-chan, why don't you come and join us?"


   "Thank you for the offer, Tsukino-sama, but we actually told a
classmate we'd check on someone else for her today," said Ami,
glancing nervously back and forth between a pair of people in Mugen
Academy uniforms and the open elevator at the end of the hallway.


   "And we already ate on the way over," said Makoto as she hobbled
her way down the hallway, the rubber foot on the crutch squeaking
against the linoleum. "We wouldn't want you two to pay for a meal we
we're hardly going to eat, right?"


   Mr. and Mrs. Tsukino looked at each other. "Well, all right, if you
say so..." The girls turned away from him and started to move.


   "...But before you go," said Mrs. Tsukino, and the four girls half-
sighed and turned back to her, "I just wanted to thank you all for
being such good friends to our little girl. We know you're the world
to her, and it really means a lot that you showed up to support her."


   Minako grinned. "Why thank you, Tsukino-sama! It's what friends are
for."


   That was when they heard the horrible crashing, grinding cacophony
from the lobby, a noise followed up by mixed screams of panic.


   Minako's grin vanished. "You two," she pointed at Rei and Ami,
"409, take the stairs." They nodded and took off at a sprint, no
longer caring about what the Tsukino family thought -- the the
Tsukinos were a couple doors down the hall, looking into the lobby
with shock and horror.


   Minako and Makoto looked at each other, then Minako spun and kicked
open the door to the room next to Usagi's. It was occupied, but by an
elderly man who seemed not to respond to the loud noises or Minako's
sudden intrusion -- it'd have to do. Makoto dug through her pockets
for her wand, flinging aside newsstand receipts and Tootsie Roll
wrappers and spare change, Minako slammed the door behind them, and
almost in unison they cried:


   "VENUS STAR POWER, MAKE UP!"


   "JUPITER STAR POWER, MAKE UP!"


   Light and sound and energy cascaded over the both of them as
ancient magics lent them their power. In almost no time at all they
had transformed, shedding their guises of Aino Minako and Kino Makoto
to become Sailor Venus and Sailor Jupiter, warriors of the Silver
Millennium.


   The instant the spell had finished casting and their feet touched
the ground again, Sailor Jupiter screamed and fell, would have
collapsed utterly if Sailor Venus had not caught her.


   "OW!" gasped Jupiter as she put a hand out on the wall to brace
herself. "Okay, that's good to know. Sailor Transformation makes a leg
cast go away. Sailor Transformation heals minor wounds. Sailor
Transformation does NOT heal a broken leg."


   "Are you okay?" asked Venus.


   "Yes, go, go!" said Jupiter through gritted teeth, waving her free
hand toward the source of the noises. "I'll catch up in a second!"


   Venus nodded and stepped back into the hallway just in time to see
a young man -- who was not wearing a Mugen uniform but certainly had
the eyes for it -- shoulder-tackle a stunned Ikuko Tsukino to the
ground. She ran towards them, as she did pounding on the door of
Usagi's room and shouting "DO IT!" as if she hadn't realized that yet.


   The probably-Mugen student spun from the prone Ikuko and punched
Kenji Tsukino in the stomach, abruptly stopping his ability to
counter-attack. He swept Usagi's father's legs out from underneath him
and brought his fist to the man's jaw on the way down. Venus
considered a 'halt, evildoer!' speech but figured now probably wasn't
the best time, what with her best friends parents being beaten up and
the horrible grinding and gnashing noise still coming from the lobby.
She conjured forth the Venus Love-Me Chain and snapped it at the
assailant, getting a loop from his left shoulder to right armpit. She
gave it a yank and almost went toppling forward, the man had braced
himself and prepared for a game of tug-of-war; and the extra bit of
oomph Venus was expecting the chain to provide was conspicuously
absent -- maybe the power wasn't all back yet.


   The man grinned evilly as he looped the chain around his right arm
and prepared to yank it out of Venus's grasp. For his benefit, she put
on an expression of mock-dismay for a moment, then pointed her middle
and index fingers at him and shouted "Crescent Beam SMASH!"


   And SMASH! it did, nailing him right in the sternum and sending him
backward and to the floor. He bounced off the wall with a satisfying
'WHUD', barely audible over the horrid gnashing from the lobby, and
hit the ground like a wet rag doll. He was breathing -- the Crescent
Beam wasn't fatal to normal humans even at full power -- but he
wouldn't be trying anything crazy like this any time soon. Venus blew
an imaginary wisp of smoke off her fingertips.


   The door to Usagi's room flew open and out came Sailor Moon,
looking dismayed and with a bunch of wires tangled into the ribbon on
her chest. Just behind her was a grimacing Sailor Jupiter using her
metal crutch in a gait so wide it would be more accurately named a
'pole-vault'. All three of them made it to Usagi's parents at about
the same time, so all three of them saw what was in the lobby at once.



*


   Donna, Bill and Hotaru raced down the rear stairwell to the
emergency exit, the van was parked closer to the back doors and there
was no need to use the lobby. Hotaru had mentioned she couldn't run as
fast as them and would slow them down, and that's why Bill was
carrying her in his arms like a very large newborn.


   "Where's Phil and Nadine, we can't leave them!" Bill said.


   "Don't worry, they're not even here! They went off to get us some
lunch, they walked because they figured you were going to need a
while," Donna called back, taking the steps three at a time. "We'll
just call Nadine on her cellular once we get clear of here and tell
her what's going on!"


   "This is all my fault," said Hotaru, "None of this would be
happening if I wasn't still here."


   Bill looked down at her and made a 'pfft' noise. "How do you know
this is your fault? Crazy shit happens around me all the time, how do
you know it's not my fault?"


   "Yeah, Miss Tomoe," Donna chimed in, "This is all clearly Bill's
fault." She picked up her pace to run at the emergency exit, leapt
into the air, grabbed onto the doorframe, and kicked the door open
with both feet. The alarm didn't sound. She hung there for a moment,
waiting for Bill to catch up or for some kind of accolade, then she
dropped to her feet and started rummaging through her pockets.


   "Oh Jesus Donna, do not tell me you lost the keys!"


   "Keep your pants on, I got them right here. Wait, what is..." She
closed one eye and stuck the tip of her tongue out as she pulled out
the object, a fat and gaudy pen topped by a black sphere intersected
by a purple disc. "Oh, I almost forgot about that! I think this is
your pen, Miss Tomoe."


   Donna handed the transformation pen to her, obviously having no
idea what it was, and Hotaru took it. Then she looked down at herself
and realized her gown didn't have any pockets. She just held onto it
rather than making a fuss.


   "So where are we going to go?" asked Bill as they reached the car.
"Police never help with this kind of stuff."


   "No, not the police," Donna said as she unlocked the car. "Phil
says there's a safe house somewhere around here. We drive a couple
blocks, use a pay phone, ask him where it is."


   Bill opened the sliding door and Hotaru walked in like a cow being
led up the slaughterhouse ramp, feeling like an idiot holding her
transformation pen. The seat was uncomfortable, lumpy. Bill opened his
own door, jumped into the seat, and immediately swore. "Son of a
BITCH!"


   "What is it now?" asked Donna, clearly not caring.


   Bill pulled a rectangular hunk of plastic from underneath his
thigh. "Nadine left her phone in the car again."


   "DAMN it!" Donna smacked the wheel. "What's the point of having one
of those if you leave it in the car all the time?"


   "I don't know!" yelled Bill like he was being accused of something.
"Did they tell you where they were going?"


   "No, they said they were going to quote 'poke around' a bit." She
sighed. A huge, soundless flash of blue light came from some of the
windows on the first floor, and she sat bolt-upright and turned the
ignition. "We can't stay here -- they'll know to meet us at the hotel,
right?" she said as she was already halfway out of the parking lot.


   "Sure... do you know where the hotel is?"


   "No, I don't. One of them was always reading a map -- is there a
map in the glove box?"


   Bill popped the glove compartment open, pulled out what was inside,
and grimaced. There was a road atlas of the greater Tokyo area, and
aside from the words 'Greater Tokyo Road Atlas' on the cover none of
it was in English. "All in Japanese, Donna."


   "Bill, I can't read Japanese." She moved into the turn lane despite
the fact she had no idea where she was going.


   "Well it's not like I put that there to foil you!"


   "It's not -- if you -- it should --" Donna flailed, trying and
failing to make this Bill's fault so she could have someone right
there to yell at.


   Hotaru sighed. "I can read the map."


   Donna started to say something and Bill cut her off, then turned
around in his seat much farther than he could if he wore a seatbelt.
"Hey, if you're up for it I'm not going to stop you. Donna, why don't
you stop at this light for a change and we can switch seats?"


   She stopped, and they switched seats, Bill immediately identifying
the source of discomfort in the back seat as his Mosin Nagant sniper
rifle laid across the seat with a blanket thrown carelessly over it.
Hotaru got into the front seat, buckled her seatbelt, and with two
fingers holding her transformation pen opened the road atlas and began
to navigate Donna toward the Juuban Hilton. It would be much later
when she recognized the significance of this event, if she thought it
was significant now she would not have done it. It was the first time
after her recent attempt at suicide-by-Silence that she had put
herself in a position where another person trusted her, no matter how
minor the role.


*


   The main occupant of the lobby and the source of the horrible
racket was a daimon. A creature, nine or ten feet tall, its body made
of rusting steel and fraying wires, studded with electrical coils up
and down its arms. The hospital's ceiling was only about seven feet
high, so the monster was on its knees, and even then its head and the
coils on its shoulders were gouging into the ceiling, scraping and
tearing at the wiring and ductwork. There was a featureless black star
on each of its hands, a sure sign of the Death Busters, and it was
picking up the unconscious forms of the people around it, extracting
heart crystals (of varying shapes and purities) by means of a
sustained electric shock, and throwing the "empties" into a pile
behind the reception desk. A couple people moved around it, bringing
unconscious people to it from areas it could not reach, and the noises
it made as its coils scraped the ceiling and its legs scraped each
other was mind-searing.


   "Stop right there, evildoer!" shouted Venus and Moon in near-
unison.


   The daimon turned to face them with its huge red LED eyes and wide,
functionless metal jaw; it could only turn its head so far and ended
up facing a point 30 degrees away from them. "SHUT UP!" it shouted,
"SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUUUT UUUP JUST SHUT UP!" Its voice was harried and
a bit panicked; to the extent a electrical-demon-robot has an
identifiable tone of voice.


   The coils lining its body flared to life with crackling blue-white
power, the lights all flickered, and the other people in the room
stopped manhandling the unconscious bodies in the room and all ducked
behind cover. The charge built up in a split-second that seemed to
take hours, a hum rising in pitch until it was almost outside of human
auditory range. Venus agonized for an instant before she dove into
Moon to get her out of the way of the attack, but Jupiter was out of
her reach and there was no way she could get out of the way in time.
She didn't even try to move to avoid the attack, she just let go of
the metal crutch and pushed it off to her side.


   The daimon unleashed its attack and the lights went out, the Sun
went out, everything in the world was pitch darkness when compared to
the eye-searing illumination of that bolt of lightning. Venus and Moon
had made it out of the way, but barely, and their hair and clothing
were standing on end, and Minako was twitching slightly. Mr. and Mrs.
Tsukino as well as the man Venus had knocked out, laying on the floor
in the hallway, were twitching and spasming wildly.


   Jupiter, totally unmarred, scoffed. She looked upward -- as if she
could even see something mounted in the center of her own forehead --
and muttered "Lightning rods don't even work that way."


   "GO AWAY!" the monster howled, waving its arm as it built another
charge. "GO AWAY GO AWAY GO AWAYAWAYAWAY WHY ARE YOU STILL HERE!"
Venus peeked her head around the corner and almost instantly another
discharge of electricity, one mercifully less intense, streaked from
the daimon's body directly into her face. She yelped and was thrown
backwards a good two feet, luckily Moon grabbed her and was able to
get her back behind the cover of the wall before the monster could
discharge again.


   "That thing's got a lot of zap to it," shouted Venus over the hum
of its coils recharging.


   "Yeah, I noticed!" Jupiter shouted back without looking. She
crouched and reached for the crutch on the floor; as her fingers
neared it another discharge leapt from the monster's arms toward the
piece of metal, lightning arced from it to her fingers and gave her a
shock. "Sailor Moon! Could you throw me your left shoe?" A couple
seconds later she was hit in the head with a boot; it would have
knocked her off her one-legged balance if she hadn't expected it.
"Thank you."


   Jupiter crouched down to pick up Moon's shoe, slowly so as not to
throw off her balance, never taking her eyes off the daimon in the
lobby. It was spinning in place by pounding its fist into the floor
and dragging itself in a circle so it could face her better, but as
long as it didn't have any other ranged attacks she was a good 5
meters out of its reach and it could take a long time to close that
distance. Her leg was only a dull, throbbing pain when nothing was
touching or moving it, but when it jostled around as she moved without
a cast on the pain was nearly paralytic. There was no suitable
material nearby for a splint, and she was going to need to hop around
without shrieking in agony and collapsing. She knew Usagi was a couple
of shoe sizes smaller than hers, and she hoped that her knee-high boot
would be tight enough to hold the bone in place so the level of pain
was at least manageable.


   She slowly, deliberately dropped her shoe on the ground and lined
her foot up with Usagi's boot. The daimon had rotated around to face
her completely and appeared to have built up a full charge but was
doing nothing, unless repeating "HURRY UP HURRY UP WHY ARE YOU TAKING
SO LONG?" counted as something.


   She grimaced and yanked the boot onto her leg in one motion,
instantly she felt as if the lower part of her leg had been ripped off
and replaced with a vat of acid filled with broken glass. She shrieked
in agony and collapsed, thrashing back and forth slightly, biting down
on her forearm in a mad attempt to have some kind of control over the
sensation. A few of the hypnotized students poked their heads out of
cover and resumed their business, though they all steered clear of
where the three senshi were.


   And then, the momentary pain passed, though the constant pain that
underlied it was still pretty significant. Jupiter wiped a tear of
pain from her eye and experimentally lifted her left leg a little. It
hurt, it hurt like she'd been stabbed, but that was a lot less than it
did before and she could deal with it if she had to. And she did.
Gingerly, on three limbs, she crab-walked over to Venus and Moon, who
helped her to stand.


   "Are you okay, Mako-chan?" asked Moon, lifting her up by the arms
to help support her.


   "I think I'm going to throw up," she replied. Venus and Moon
shifted their stances so no part of them was in front of her.


   They waited a couple seconds and when Jupiter hadn't vomited in
that time, Venus spoke. "It looks like it won't attack you because it
knows it can't hurt you, and it can't move toward us fast enough to
use its hands. Sailor Moon, I don't quite remember, do you have any
magical attacks that only use your hands?"


   Moon looked off to the left for a second as she thought. "Well, I
can throw my tiara... other than that no, they all use the Moon Rod.
Why?"


   Venus nodded. Her hair was still pointing out from her in every
direction; she looked like she'd eaten a Van de Graaf generator.
"That's what I thought. Okay, Jupiter, what I want to do is have you
lean away from the wall just a little so it can see like half of your
body. I only need two fingers to use the Crescent Beam, so I'm going
to stand behind you and try to shoot it without exposing more than my
fingertips, and hope he can't hit those when they're next to you.
Think you're up to it?" Jupiter swallowed audibly, but nodded.


   Venus and Moon helped her most of the way over to the edge of the
wall, then Jupiter hopped out into the monster's field of vision on
her own, sharply inhaling through her teeth with each jump. The
monster was still staring at them, still humming and crackling with
power, and when it saw her it resumed shouting. "STOP WASTING MY TIME!
WHY ARE YOU WASTING MY TIME? STOP WASTING MY TIME! JUST LEAVE ME
ALONE!" Jupiter leaned forward and put her left shoulder on the wall,
and looked at the daimon warily.


   "What is this thing's problem?" Venus asked. "Usually they're
telling us their name and how they're going to defeat us and how we're
sailor-brats, or sailor-runts, or smelly-senshi, or something. This
thing is freaking out like we're bothering it in the middle of a test.
Okay, Jupiter, press your right arm to your side."


   Jupiter did as she was asked, and pressed her arm to her side. "I
know, it's acting like we're interrupting this real important job, but
it isn't actually trying to do it. Or trying to move around and attack
you two, or get rid of me." Venus stretched out her arm, reached
behind Jupiter, and pushed her middle and index fingers between
Jupiter's arm and ribs until just the tips were poking out the other
side. "And there's still four guys there, stacking up people for the
monster to drain, even though he isn't doing it. They're not trying
anything, it's like they don't know we're here. Like they can't tell
what's going on, or even talk to each other." She looked down at her
armpit, closed one eye, and looked back up at the daimon. "All right,
you're aiming at him."


   Venus howled "Crescent Beam SMASH!" not even bothering with the
gestures this time. Brilliant yellow energy shot from her fingertips
right above Jupiter's elbow and streaked toward the daimon. What
happened next was over in a fraction of a second, but was so bright
that Jupiter could just study the afterimages it left in her vision to
determine what happened. The electrical coils had all fired at a point
in space about five meters away from the monster and that's where the
streak the Crescent Beam left in her eyes stopped. She blinked and
shook her head a few times to dispel the afterimages. "Did I get it?
What happened?" asked Venus.


   "No," said Jupiter, "It shocked the beam and dissipated it in
midair. I think. It was real quick."


   Venus scowled. "It's a laser! Lasers don't even work that way!"


   "Electricity doesn't work that way either!" snapped Jupiter in
exasperation. "Oh, wait, hang on, pull your hand back. SPARKLING WIDE
PRESSURE!" Jupiter's arm shot out in front of her and the hallway was
illuminated by pure white light. "Okay, two of them are coming for us,
it can suck up my attacks if they aren't directed at it, pull me back
pull me back PULL ME BACK!"


   Venus yanked Jupiter back into the hallway by the back of her fuku;
she started to fall, but Sailor Moon caught her outstretched arm. A
couple seconds later one of the probably-Mugen students rounded the
corner, blank malice in his eyes, and took a Moon Spiral Heart Attack
to the face for his trouble. Then, after a couple more seconds, the
second student rounded the corner with the same expression, in almost
the same pose, and Sailor Venus kicked him in the chest. He staggered
backwards long enough for Sailor Moon's energies to recharge and give
him a Moon Spiral Heart Attack to the face. There were now five
unconscious bodies laying in the hallway, splayed out on top of each
other, in a location where they couldn't move them for fear of being
electrocuted.


* * *


   "You said we were going to go get some lunch, why are we going to
the mall?"


   Dr. Neary shrugged. "They have a Chik-Fil-A in this mall. I like
Chik-Fil-A."


   "I can't stand malls," muttered Dr. Akens, "They're like mausoleums
of thoughtless consumerism. Japanese malls are worse."


   Nadine arched an eyebrow as she opened the door for Phil to usher
him in. "Mausoleums?"


   He rolled his eyes. "Like a monument to thoughtless consumerism,
only it's inside a building and there's a bunch of them."


   She considered it carefully. "Okay, I guess that works." She shut
the door behind them and took the lead, walking purposefully without
consulting a map or guide. "Anyway, we're not just here for Chik-Fil-
A, we're going to hit up a gift shop and buy the Tomoe girl something
cute. Something she'll like to have."


   Phil scoffed. "And will we write on the tag 'By Accepting This
Plush Octopus You Agree To Employment By The Hoffmann Institute'?"


   "Oh, come on. Her parents are dead, her dad tried to blow a hole in
space and time with her, she's got no siblings, she sounded like she
didn't have any friends -- nobody she wanted us to tell that she was
here, that she was safe. She needs people to be kind to her, show her
a little love." Donna was wrong, but neither of them had any way of
knowing that.


   "I know, I know. I'm just... why would he tell us to recruit a 12-
year-old Japanese girl?"


   "Hey, hey, she's 13. That's different." Phil gave her the
exasperated look he got to use so seldomly. "Eh, I don't know. Donna
made it sound like Nakami thought she had some kind of power and that
we'd need to use it more than we'd need to study it."


   "There's that kid in Richmond who can set people on fire with his
mind." Donna nodded. "We put him under surveillance, we never asked
him to join us." Donna shrugged. "What does he think she can do that's
better than that?"


   "Set people on water, maybe? That'd be a neat trick." She sighed.
"I don't like it any more than you do. This girl needs extensive
therapy and instead we've got Bill 'The Government Took My Skynyrd
Tapes' Wheeler up there, lying to her about how she's won a contest
and gets to go on a fun trip or something. But once Nakami gets
something in his head like this, he's not going to let go."


   Phil cracked the hint of a smile. "In his enormous head with his
big black eyes." Nadine giggled, slapped him lightly. A couple of
people jostled into them as they ran by, then a couple more. "Is there
like a band making an appearance here? I swear I hear this, like,
teeny-bopper screaming that OH SHIT."


   That last part Phil had said when he started to look around him and
saw why people were running away and screaming. And as reasons for
people to run and scream go, a four-armed, twelve-foot-tall woman with
hands the size of hubcaps whose entire body was wreathed in flame
seemed like a goddamned good one. Phil and Nadine both silently wished
they had a job that let them scream and run away.


   The burning monster was a couple hundred feet away from them,
rushing back and forth into packs of people. It was grabbing people at
random but it didn't look like it was trying to kill them -- it seared
them a little and then threw them into a pile by the entrance it used.
Even though it had four arms and could carry two people at once, each
time it grabbed one it stopped, held it for a couple seconds, threw it
onto the pile, and then took off in another direction for a new
target. It ran back and forth between crowds, jumped up to the second
floor and back down again, never sticking with one group as long as it
could. There were a couple people the monster seemed to be ignoring
right by the pile, who looked like they were picking people up and
stacking them.


   Phil and Nadine were wondering what the hell they were supposed to
do when that question was at once answered and made a lot more
complicated. Two people jumped down from the second floor of shops not
five feet in front of them, a blonde and a blue-hair, both of them
wearing what appeared to be white one-piece swimsuits with miniskirts
attached.


   "The herald of a new age, I am Sailor Uranus!" shouted the blonde
on the right.


   "And I am Sailor Neptune, appearing elegantly," said the blue-
haired one on the left.


   "Oh, hell," muttered the old black man and the short half-Korean
doctor standing behind them.


* * *


   Behind the three Senshi, the doors to the stairwell opened up, and
out came Sailor Mars, panting, bruised, and disheveled. "Where's
Hotaru-chan?" called Sailor Moon immediately, but Mars waited until
she'd walked over to the other three, and took a second to catch her
breath.


   "They got to her before we did." Pant, pant. "The room was a mess
-- she must have put up a hell of a fight, the shelves were knocked
around, bed was beaten to hell, two unconscious people on the floor,
hospital gowns. One looked like he had a Mugen class ring, we think
she must have fought those two off, before another one grabbed her."


   Venus and Moon arched their eyebrows and asked, "Wait, Hotaru did
that?"


   "I can't think of anyone else who would. Mercury..." she paused to
gasp for air, "Mercury tried to track her with her computer, but
there's too much electrical interference or something. But someone --
who may be the 'World's Greatest Aunt' -- broke a mug of hot chocolate
in there and it was still hot, so we had to have just missed her.
Would have... would have looked for her but we got attacked right
after."


   "Is there another daimon in the hospital?" asked Moon, panic rising
in her voice. If the daimon in the lobby was going to be the average
for today, they had serious problems.


   "No, no." Her breath was coming back. "People, they were -- you
know what, I'm just going to call creepy hypnotized people 'Mugens'
even if we don't know they went to the school. Like four Mugens came
out of the stairwell after we did and came at us. Fire doesn't have a
'stun' setting and we couldn't kill them so I was punching them while
Ami was using her magic. We got that group under control pretty
quickly, but then five more came out of the elevator. Then while we
were fighting them, two more from around the corner, and then another
four from the back stairs. I think every Mugen in the building came
for us."


   "Was it an ambush?" asked Venus.


   "No, they all were surprised to see us, and they kept getting in
each other's way during the fight, and they would all try to get into
room 409 before they started really going at us even though we were
outside it. It's like they all just thought nobody else was going to
get Hotaru so they had to do it, and they all showed up at once.
Anyway, it took us a while, and by the time we dealt with the last
ones the first ones were coming back to consciousness, but we got them
stuffed into a supply closet and we tipped over an ice machine in
front of it. Ami was going to check on the other floors and see if
anyone needed help getting out and I ran down here to see if you
needed any." She paused and looked downward. "Sailor Moon, where did
your other shoe go?"


   Moon and Venus stepped to the side to reveal Jupiter laying down
behind them. She raised her arm weakly and gave a thumbs-up.


   "We've got some kind of super-Daimon down here" said Venus. "Hits
us with a bolt of lightning if we expose ourselves to it, luckily it's
too big to move around and chase us. Can't hurt Sailor Jupiter,
but..." she looked down at Jupiter on the floor, whimpering at a
volume she thought the others couldn't hear. "but her Sailor
Transformation took her leg cast off and it almost hurts too much for
her to move. She's using that boot to hold it in place but it's not as
good as she needs it to be. And her lightning attacks can't hurt it,
either. The Daimon was extracting Heart Crystals out of everyone in
the lobby, now it's just waiting on us and shouting we should hurry
up. There's two uh, Mugens out there with it, but they haven't come
for us."


   Mars contemplated for a second. "Did you try standing behind
Jupiter and firing at it?"


   Moon shook her head and frowned. "Venus had that idea, but it
zapped her Crescent Beam out of the air."


   Mars stopped for a second. "Wait, I thought the Crescent Beam was a
laser?"


   Venus threw her hands in the air and exclaimed "I know!"


   "Okay, okay, pull me back up, I've got an idea," said Jupiter from
the floor. Venus and Moon reached down to help her get to her foot.
"Okay, from what I can see is that all of those electro-coils he's
shooting power out of are on his arms and shoulders. The ones on his
shoulders are caught in the ceiling and they can't hit anything, and
if he was standing up the with his arms at his sides the arms would
cover everything, but he's bent down and his arms are out in front of
him like a gorilla and they don't cover as much."


   "So we leave out the back exit and come around through the front
while he's facing you?" asked Venus.


   "No, no," Jupiter shook her head. "The entrance isn't on the
opposite wall from this hallway, and he can still cover a wide area.
And the other two walls don't have any doors that link to the rest of
the hospital. You could shoot him but you'd have to do it from
directly behind. Moon, is that Moon Rod made out of metal? Or
plastic?"


   Moon felt its weight in her hands, rapped it lightly against the
back of her hand. "Uh, I think it's made out of love. It feels pretty
solid."


   "Do you think that things made of love conduct electricity?"


   "Not that I can remember, no."


   "Okay," said Jupiter, "Do you mind if I borrow it?"


   "Why do you need the Moon Rod, Jupiter?" asked Venus.


   "Because it's not made of metal and it's not made of something
breakable," said Jupiter as one continuous sigh. "I'm going to get in
there and go to the far wall and get it to face me. When I do, I'm
going to call to you guys and that's when you pop out from behind that
corner and give it both barrels, and hopefully destroy it." She
glanced at the rod. "I need the rod because there's two Mugens still
out there and if they attack me I'd like to have a weapon that I can
carry, that won't get me zapped, and won't snap when I smash it
against someone's head."


   "I don't think it was meant to be used like that..." Sailor Moon
looked down at the rod in her hand, "...but if you need it, then you
need it, Mako-chan." She placed the enchanted scepter of the Moon
Kingdom into the hands of someone planning to use it as a billy club
and smiled.


   "All right. Carry me as far as you can, but don't peek around until
I shout for you. And if you see Ami... ask her where they keep the
painkillers here. The ones they have to lock up." They carried her to
the edge of the hallway, and she experimentally poked the Moon Rod
around the corner; when it wasn't struck by lightning, she started
hopping her way into the lobby.


   The monster appeared not to have moved from its position, and when
it saw Jupiter it started yelling "WHY HAVEN'T YOU GONE AWAY YET? WHY
ARE YOU MAKING ME DEAL WITH THIS! YOU'RE DELAYING THINGS! GO AWAY!"
Jupiter wondered what it would do if she really did leave, as the
creature had seen her vanish behind the wall and yet had not resumed
whatever it was doing that was so important. Next to it was a stack of
unconscious people, three wide, waiting on the daimon to drain their
pure hearts. Everyone in the room had been assembled into the stack,
save for the six or so that had already been drained, and the stack
was now about thigh-high -- really too big to stay together on its
own; the Mugen who had been piling them together was now just picking
up the same two people who kept falling off the top and placing them
back on the top, where they fell off within seconds. Occasionally
someone started to wake up, and the Mugen punched him or her in the
head until they stopped moving again. The other Mugen was walking back
and forth, looking under the seats and benches as if checking for
people he missed. He was also looking underneath magazines and
handbags and potted plants, so maybe he was looking for very tiny
people he missed.


   Jupiter hopped, slowly even for someone hopping on one foot, into
the lobby. She kept a wide berth around the daimon -- she was pretty
damn sure she wasn't immune to an electricity-monster punching her. Or
snapping her like a toothpick, which he could damn well do with those
massive hands. She hopped a slow circle around the creature, wishing
that she was shorter or the Moon Rod longer so she could use it as a
cane. The daimon continued to shout "GO AWAY! GO AWAY! SHUT UP AND GO
AWAY!" at her, and rotate its head to keep her in sight, but once
she'd made 30 degrees of the circle around it she realized it was not
rotating its body to face her. She wouldn't be much use if SHE was
behind it, because those damn generator-arms of its could draw away
her lightning attacks from a much greater distance and wider angle
than they stopped Venus's Crescent Beam from. She waited for Mugen
Number 2 to pass her by as if she didn't exist, then picked up the
issue of Rolling Stone he'd just lifted up and looked beneath for the
fourth time. She put her hand on the bottom corner, pointed the spine
at the daimon, and gave it a fling. The pages flapped open as the
magazine turned end over end, and then John Entwhistle on the front
and the bottle of Absolut vodka on the back were both incinerated by a
burst of electricity from the daimon's arms. "YOU'RE NOT DOING
ANYTHING! WHY WON'T YOU STOP DOING IT?" it hollered, but obviously it
thought she did do something as it moved its arms around and started
to rotate its body by pulling in a circle on the floor. The two Mugens
looked up at her as if she had not already been in the room for a good
five minutes.


   Mugen #2 was closer to her and without a snarl or a growl, just the
same unchanging nonspecific loathing, he charged at her. Jupiter
grabbed a bench with her right arm and pulled herself out of his path
while her left arm swung the Moon Rod into his face. She caught him in
the jaw with a satisfying CRACK and he veered away from her but he
didn't fall. Mugen #1 had to run in a circle around the daimon's legs
and on the way it looked like he'd picked up an old man's cane, which
he was holding aloft like Excalibur. He closed the gap to her and
swung it at her neck with both hands, she swung at it with the Moon
Rod in only one. The instant they collided the wooden cane snapped in
two, Mugen #1's half continuing on its path downward and to the left
and Jupiter's half smacking her in the face and spraying her with
shards of wood. Mugen #1 had overextended himself after the swing, and
with one eye still closed because of the sawdust Jupiter bashed him on
the back of the head with the base of the Moon Rod.


   Mugen #2, recovered and re-oriented, charged Jupiter from her left.
She swung at him again, aiming for his throat, but the angle was
awkward and he easily ducked it. He went into a baseball-slide
position and kicked her right in her broken leg with his full running
momentum, and this time she did throw up. A stream of putrid
yellowish-green liquid, filled with the remnants of this morning's
oatmeal and the Twix bar she'd got out of the vending machine a couple
hours ago, surged forth from her mouth and coated the front of her
fuku as well as the kneeling form of Mugen #1. It didn't really feel
all that worse than it had before, to Jupiter's perception, in fact
the pain seemed a bit duller than just a moment ago. But the fact she
was vomiting, her vision had whited out, she'd dropped the Rod and
fallen to the floor and was shrieking incoherently, all said that her
relative peace might indicate she was in more pain then she could
actually comprehend. She didn't even know that was possible.


   She felt a hand on her arm, then she felt herself being moved, and
guessed it was Mugen #2 dragging her along the floor to throw on the
pile. Her voluntary muscle movement was back, that only took a few
seconds, but her eyes still weren't giving her anything. Not wanting
to wait and get dragged within arm's reach of the daimon, she reached
across her chest to grab the arm holding her, wiggled it slightly to
get an idea of where the torso it was attached to was, and then yanked
it toward her. She threw up her elbow to where she thought the man's
head would land but she was working blind and misguessed and the man's
head landed in the middle of her chest. He might have even liked it if
he had all his mental faculties, and her chest wasn't coated in vomit.
He started to push up off of her but she grabbed him by the head with
one hand, shouted "Sparkling Wide..." and then punched him in the neck
with the hand that her attack was charging in. He twitched, and she
twitched because she was touching him, but after they were done
twitching he had stopped moving and she still could. Theoretically.


   She rolled him off of her and put a hand over her eyes. "WHY ARE
YOU STILL HERE? WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS? WHY WON'T YOU GO AWAY?" yelled
the daimon.


   "Are you still back there?" shouted Jupiter over the monster's
whining.


   "Mars went to do another sweep and make sure everyone is out,"
shouted Moon's voice back. "What's happening? Are you okay?"


   Jupiter moaned slightly. "No, no I'm not okay. It might take me a
minute or two to get back up. And I threw up on your Moon Rod. But me
and Whiny Shocker are all that's left here."


   "I forgive you," said Moon, way too quickly.


   "Okay, just, just give me a minute, okay?" The pain was fading, and
when it was fading from 'incomprehensible' that meant it was fading
into 'comprehensible and ludicrously severe'. Jupiter tried to
concentrate on her breathing, concentrate on something that wasn't the
pain in her leg. That wasn't easy when it felt like her lower leg
stretched up to her collarbone and some enterprising advertiser has
secretly replaced her bone marrow with molten magma and then turned to
the camera and said 'let's watch'. She wiped away more tears of pain
and pretended they were laughter.


   Her vision was back, if blurry, and she hiked herself up on her
elbows and looked around. Neither of the Mugens was getting up, and
the monster had not turned away from her, it was still shouting for
her to leave, or stop bothering it, or stop doing things in general.
And she would have been glad to if there hadn't been a pile of people
next to it it was going to vacuum the hearts out of.


   She looked at the edge of one of the benches and briefly considered
using it to stand back up; when she realized that she would rather
shoot herself in the head with a gun that shot steam locomotives than
stand up again she rejected that plan. She rolled over slightly and
grabbed another magazine -- a National Geographic with a meerkat on
the cover -- and slipped it underneath her left heel so it would slide
across the floor easier, and she began to drag herself to her
destination with her elbows, pausing whenever she passed a magazine to
throw it at the monster and make sure it was still following her. It
did, dragging itself with its hands to follow the movements of her
dragging herself with her arms, all the while shouting its complaints
and questions.


   Eventually she made it to the other side of the lobby without
crossing within range of it, she could see the entrance of the hallway
where Venus and Moon and maybe the others were, and all of the
monster's generator coils were pointed at her. But she hesitated. She
couldn't help it. This monster put her through hell and she needed a
little personal satisfaction. So she waited until the monster shouted
"WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS?"


   Just so she could shout back "Because you never shut up, that's
why! VENUS! MOON! HIT IT NOW!"


* * *


   "Bill, you said this was a mixtape, are there any songs on this
that aren't 'Free Bird'?" Donna slapped the "off" button on the car
stereo in disgust rather than switching to the radio. She mashed the
'eject' button on the tape deck with her thumb, meaning to throw the
tape out the window, but apparently Bill became a damn mongoose when
his Skynyrd tapes were in danger and he snatched it away from her in
the blink of an eye.


   "Okay, that was three blocks and that looks like the mall, so take
a right here," said Hotaru from the passenger's seat. She tipped to
the left which told her that Donna had followed her directions again
-- and she'd never complained once! About the directions, anyway.


   "So, you're saying that if you got a New York strip steak," said
Bill as he waggled the tape a bit before he slipped it in his pocket,
"you'd rather put butterscotch on it than steak sauce because it's
'different'?" He looked at Hotaru for some support; she didn't giggle,
but she felt like it was the kind of thing that was supposed to make
her giggle, theoretically. "Because that's what I'm hearing you say."


   "Wow, Bill. You've broken your previous record for 'car with feet',
I do believe that is the stupidest analogy ev-- LOOK OUT!" Donna stood
on the brake, a pedal to which she was not usually accustomed, and the
car screeched to a halt. Hotaru was held in her seat by the safety
belt, and Bill collided face first with the back of her seat with a
'thud'.


   Nobody had to ask why she stopped, it was the same reason that
there weren't any cars behind her honking their horns or swerving past
her and giving her the finger (though in Japan they rarely did that
anyway). It was because there was a gigantic woman -- ten feet easy --
with no hair, armor made of scuffed and dented galvanized steel,
safety-cone orange skin threaded through with what looked like piping,
cable, and rebar, a black star on her forehead, and a massive
pneumatic piledriver replacing her right arm below the elbow. There
were two piles of people, one on either side of her, and she picked up
someone from the larger pile on the right with her non-piston hand,
caused it to glow as she pulled something out of him, then dropped him
on the pile on her left. At her sides a couple of people scurried
about and straightened the piles.


   "That's a monster," said Donna.


   "That's a monster," agreed Bill.


   "That's a daimon," said Hotaru like she regretted it. "They're what
the Pharaoh 90 sends to gather pure hearts from people."


   Bill didn't gloat even though he was totally right and Donna was
totally wrong about her story, there would be time for that later.
Instead he said, "It's bad, I'm going to shoot it." He grabbed a
handful of rifle bullets out of the seat, stuffed them into his jacket
pocket, and jumped out of the car with his Mosin Nagant in hand.


   The sighting on the scope was useless since at least two people had
sat on it, but the monster was across the street and he didn't need a
damn scope. Bill waited until he saw both humans' and the monster's
backs were turned (they seemed not to notice him but best not to take
any chances), then he rolled from behind the van, dropped to one knee,
braced the rifle against his shoulder, and fired.


   The daimon-monster's head snapped forward, but not far enough, and
when it came back up again bullet fragments fell out of the little
bloodless pit they made in the back of it's head. "Bulletproof," he
muttered, "I should have guessed."


   The monster whirled in place to face him and pointed with her left
hand. It shouted something in Japanese -- Hotaru was the only one to
recognize it as "WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE? WHY AREN'T YOU GOING AWAY?"
It started to run at him, the ground shaking with her every step.
Oddly neither of her "attendants" seemed to notice, and they were just
concerned with straightening the human piles that kept falling apart
with her ground-shaking steps.


   Bill jumped on the back bumper of the van and shouted "PUNCH IT!",
the tires squealed, and a massive metal piledriver passed through the
space where his head was about half a second before. He held on to the
rear-doorhandle for balance, fearing if he opened it he'd fall off the
narrow rear bumper.


   The monster turned and chased after the car, yelling "I DON'T HAVE
TIME FOR THIS! YOU ARE WASTING MY TIME!" but making no attempt to
break off pursuit. Her legs were long, but heavy, and with the lack of
traffic Donna quickly got a five-block gap between them. That's the
point when she pulled an abrupt 180 and sent Bill rolling off his
perch and into the curb. At the same time, the passenger-side door
opened and out hopped Hotaru, holding a Japanese road atlas in one
hand and her transformation pen in the other. Almost before her feet
touched the road the van took off with a squeal of rubber and drove
straight at the monster.


   "Oh, this is stupid," muttered Bill. Hotaru nodded her assent.


   The van actually managed a speed of 40 miles per hour or so, and
the monster running at least ten, when Donna yanked on the handbrake
and spun the wheel to her right and sent the car into a slide. She
opened the door and stepped out as coolly and calmly as if the car had
been standing still and a second later, the van and the daimon
collided, rolling backward down the center line of the road, emitting
shrieks of pain and a horrible grinding noise of metal on metal. Donna
kissed the back of her knuckles and threw her hand up in the air in
the 'V for Victory' sign, walking calmly toward Bill and Hotaru.


   When she heard the monster's massive piston-arm fire and blast the
wrecked heap of the van away from her, Donna broke into a sprint.


   "STOP IT! STOP IT! YOU'RE NOT DOING ANYTHING! GO AWAY!" shouted the
monster as it rose from the tangled heap of machinery, and it was
clear that Donna had done something. Her left arm was chopped off
above the elbow and the stump oozed a thick purplish glop. Several
pieces of the car's frame were piercing through her torso, her right
eye has been gouged out along with a good chunk of her head. Still she
ran at them once more, howling "SHUT UP! IT DOESN'T WORK! SHUT UP!"


   Hotaru winced and after two seconds of thought that lasted forever,
dropped the road atlas to the sidewalk, took a deep breath, and called
out, "Saturn Planet Power, Make Up!" She was bathed in flashing,
multicolored light, wreathed in ancient energy, and within seconds she
was remade. She was taller, older, and she stood in the stance of a
confident warrior but her eyes were two purple and black pools of
terror and doubt. Her flimsy hospital gown was gone, replaced by a
white fuku with a dark purple skirt. Dark boots went up to her knees,
white gloves went to her elbows. A large purple bow was on her chest,
adorned by a many-pointed gemstone. On her head rested a golden tiara,
and in her hand was a long pole attached to a deadly-looking twin-
headed blade.


   Bill looked at her with complete confusion. Donna looked at her
with a face that was too contorted by running for her life and yelling
"SHIT! SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT!" to adequately express complete confusion.
The daimon was still shouting and chasing Donna but didn't look at her
at all. For a horrid moment Hotaru felt as if she was in a play and
she had forgotten her lines. Then after a second she yelled,


   "The herald of catastrophe, I am Sailor Saturn!"






---




* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
* B O N U S   C O N T E N T *
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *


HOFFMANN INSTITUTE AGENT NUMBER S-0014407
NAME: TRUITT, DONNA KIMBERLY


AGE: 31
PREV. ASSOCIATION: Central Intelligence Agency (Governmental,
Espionage)
ASSIGNMENT: Investigation & Response Team Rho


HISTORY: Donna Truitt was recruited by the CIA shortly after
graduating from college (UC Santa Cruz -- go Banana Slugs) to be an
infiltration and extraction expert. Shortly after her training, she
found she could not do the jobs asked of her by the government and
resigned. She sold her skills as a professional thief on the black
market, but only to those who she believed would not use the things
she stole to harm others, and neither would she steal from people who
she believed it would actually harm. Needless to say, her business was
incredibly slim, and most of her jobs were aborted halfway through
after finding out some unpleasant detail about the person who hired a
shadowy professional thief on the black market to steal something.


Mrs. Truitt joined the Institute after being involved in an October
1992 incident that concerned the summoning of an ice-demon at a rural
Idaho truck stop, where she had stopped while fleeing a previous
employer.


PSYCHOLOGY: Donna Truitt is massively insecure. Far moreso than the
other three insecure members of I&R Team Rho. She has built an ideal
of herself as a limitlessly-cool, vastly-skilled, utterly ice-hearted
professional and hates every part of herself that doesn't live up to
this. She hated herself for her inability to kill people for the CIA,
and for her inability to steal from orphans, and constantly is driven
to prove herself as living up to this imaginary and sociopathic ideal
-- but finds herself incapable. Reacts with great hostility to any
perceived attempt to mock her for her shortcomings as well as any
attempt by others to act as if they are superior to her.


Skilled enough at 'infiltration and extraction' to warrant retaining,
and Institute business seldom conflicts with her moral code enough to
cause problems. Needs to be surrounded by a team to keep her in check
and provide an outlet for combative urges. A team of three or four
mentally healthy individuals would have smothered her in her sleep by
now.


SPECIES: Human
PROFESSION: Free Agent
ACHIEVEMENT LEVEL: 5


STR 09 [+0]  INT 12 [+1]
DEX 12 [+2]  WIL 09 [+1]
CON 08       PER 10


Second Sight   [4]: After an aggravating fiasco in Spokane, Washington
involving a warlock making heavy use of 'glamours', Donna has been
trained in the ability to see through illusions. She receives a -1
step bonus on any skill roll to pierce an illusion, and is always
entitled to a WIL feat check to pierce illusion even if the skill
normally allows none.
Code of Honor [+3]: Donna talks a big game and plays herself off as
cool and callous, but deep down she cares too much. Donna will not
knowingly perform an act to harm someone, directly or indirectly, who
she does not believe had hurt or is trying to hurt her. And if she
inadvertently or through inaction causes harm to come to those she
perceives as 'innocent' she must work to make it right again, even and
especially when such behavior is a huge pain in the ass for her and
her teammates. Note this generally applies to people she doesn't know,
which is why if one of her teammates were to point out or mention this
code of honor, she would hit them.
Temper        [+4]: Donna cannot -- CANNOT -- stand having her skill
questioned, and neither can she abide people making her out to be
their inferior. When exposed to such behavior in all but the most
minor way, she becomes irate and belligerent, acting without thinking,
and suffers a +2 step penalty to most actions until she calms down or
the offender apologizes (and she believes it).
Clueless      [+4]: Donna is nowhere near as good at the art of
seduction as she thinks she is. She keeps trying it, though, playing
into her own fantasies of being the femme fatale, the erotic assassin.
Nobody else on the team will tell her why she keeps failing because
that's the ticket to a half-hour berating session. Donna has a +2 step
penalty on all Interaction -- Seduce skill checks.


Combat Information:
Weapon:       Score:   Range:   Damage (O/G/A):   Type:
Unarmed       14/7/3 Personal     d6s/d6+2s/d4w    LI/O
.45 1911A1 12/6/3 +1  6/12/40   d4+1w/d4+2w/d4m    HI/O
Coffee Mug 14/7/3 +1 Personal d6+2s/d6+3s/d4+1w LI+En/O


Action Check: 15+/14/7/3
Durability: 08 / 08 / 04 / 04
Actions Per Round: 2
Last Resort Points: 2


Athletics                  [09/4/2]
> Climb 1                  [10/5/2]
> Jump 2                   [11/5/2]
Unarmed Attack             [09/4/2]
> Power Martial Arts 1     [10/5/2]
Acrobatics                 [12/6/3]
> Defensive Martial Arts 2 [14/7/3]
> Dodge 2                  [14/7/3]
Manipulation               [12/6/3]
> Lockpick 1               [13/6/3]
Modern Ranged Weapons      [12/6/3]
Stealth                    [12/6/3]
> Sneak 1                  [13/6/3]
Vehicle Operation          [12/6/3]
> Land Vehicle (Car) 1     [13/6/3]
Stamina                    [08/4/2]
> Endurance 1              [09/4/2]
Knowledge                  [12/6/3]
> Computer Operation 1     [13/6/3]
Security                   [12/6/3]
> Security Devices 2       [14/7/3]
Awareness                  [09/4/2]
> Intuition 1              [10/5/2]
> Perception 1             [10/5/2]
Deception                  [10/5/2]
> Bluff 2                  [12/6/3]
Interaction                [10/5/2]
> Seduce 2                 [12/6/3 +2]